Talisman!

Played some Talisman this weekend!  Both the Dungeon and City expansions were in full effect!

Le Havre

'Le Havre at it!

Hey Geekshelfers, settle down and let me tell you about a boardgame i've played recently.  

It's called Le Havre and it's a worker placement game where you collect goods, buy buildings, build ships and essentially try to earn more money at the end of the game than your opponents!  

to Havre or Havre not!

A game turn is actually very simple.  Goods arrive on the offer spaces each turn and you can either swipe  one type of good (fish, wood, clay, iron, etc.)....

Starting setup for the short, two player game

....Or you can place your pawn on a building and take its action.   There are many different buildings that you can buy (using cash) or build (using the goods resources such as wood or steel).  

Using a building lets you upgrade your goods.  In the example below, I used the Abattoir to convert some cattle into meat which allows me to feed 3 workers and also get hide.  Food is VERY important in this game because you have come up with increasing amounts of it to feed your workforce as the game goes on.

Coming up short on food means you need to spend money or take out a loan from the bank.  BIG NO NO!

Using the Abattoir to convert Cattle to meat.  YUM!

As an additional action, you can also buy buildings which allow you to use them without having to pay an entrance fee.  Another player who wishes to go into a building that you own needs to pay you the amount on the top right corner of the card (either in food or money).

Here are my buildings during mid game:

All my buildings, yo.

You can specialize in certain goods but it's generally a good idea to be a bit flexible and get several types so you don't get screwed in the long run.

A variety of goods.  Yeah, you'll be needing these.

As the game progresses, it's also worth noting that ships are VERY important.  Not only do they reduce the amount of food you need to feed your workers, they also allow you to ship your goods for extra cash (victory points)!

Joy builds a luxury liner.  

 At the end of the game, I ended up becoming a steel ship baron:

I become a steel ship baron!

 Le Havre is a pretty slick game.  Those (including me) who felt that Agricola was just too punishing and stressful will have a better time playing this.  The game gives you time to actually build your economic engine and see it set sail for a bit before the game ends.

It's also a little less punishing to the player if they're unable to feed workers.  In short, it's not very hard to recover from a few starving workers if you take out a loan from the bank or sell off a marginally useless building.

The only downsides to the game are the slight fiddliness of the goods tiles (which you can avoid by using small containers-see first picture) and the possible length and brain burn due to players with analysis paralysis.

All in all, I highly recommend Le Havre. The new reprint is also great because it includes the Grand Hameau expansion.  Check it out if you get the chance!

Le Havre on BoardgameGeek

Power Grid

Hey Geekshelfers!  Recently, Joy took a bad fall while bouldering and sprained both her ankles.  She's doing fine but she can't walk around and needs to stay off her feet for awhile.  She was feeling a bit low but luckily, we had a few friends come over and play a board game to lift her spirits.  The game was Power Grid!

In the game, players build power stations that supply electricity to houses on a map (we played the Germany map in the pic below).  

 

 Power plants are constantly auctioned off to the highest bidder and resources are purchased at market value.  This power plant, for example, can supply power to 1 house using 2 oil.

 

Here's a close-up of the resource market.  Coal is brown, oil is black, garbage is yellow and uranium is red.  The more players buy a certain resource, the less of it there is and the more expensive it gets.

resources become quite expensive!

 As the game progresses, players can use their money to build houses on the map.  Things can get pretty cutthroat here since you can buy key cities and block other people out.  It's a fine balance of having enough money to buy more houses, power plants or saving up to buy more resources!

You can build houses but can you provide enough power for them all?

 Late in the game, more efficient power plants become available that let you power more houses on the map.

Here's a picture of the map late in the game.  

Powering houses across Germany!

supplying power to 10 houses!

 I really like Power Grid.  It gives you enough time to develop your power factories and it's very satisfying to get money as you supply more and more houses with electricity.  The bidding aspect is quite fun and the route-building element on the map all gel quite nicely to provide enough meat on the game without getting too much brain-burn.

For more information on Power Grid, visit www.boardgamegeek.com

Happy Gaming!

Ascending Empires!

Hey Geekshelfers!  I recently had a chance to play a three player game of Ascending Empires and wanted to share some pictures with you.  The game is about space colonization where each player takes their troops/ships and colonizes planets in the galaxy.

What's different about the game, though is there's a dexterity element which has players flicking their space ships across the board.  That's right, flicking!

The game starts with the planets turned upside down and if you flick a space ship into its orbit (inside the planet's purple ring), you can flip it over and colonize it...

 Of course, the other players are also trying to colonize the planets!

 With each planet you discover, you can build research stations to develop different technologies that make your moves more efficient...

 As the game progresses, players start to run into each other and tension mounts!

 I've almost forgotten to write about one of the most interesting parts of the game.  Space combat.  If you can flick enough ships close to your opponent and overpower them, you can destroy their ships and earn victory points.  You can also earn victory points by colonizing planets too.  Whoever has the most VP at the end wins!

For more information on Ascending Empires, visit www.boardgamegeek.com

Weekend Boardgaming 1/08/2012: Thunderstone

Played two games of Thunderstone this weekend with Joy.  Yep, she whooped me both times.  Cruel!

For more info on Thunderstone, visit www.boardgamegeek.com

Weekend boardgame Sat Oct 2 2011: Tomb Cryptmaster

Dungeon crawl fans unite!  So last night, Joy and I played an awesome game of  Tomb: Cryptmaster.   

 The players start at the Inn where they can recruit characters, heal up, and draw spells, prayers or items.

character minis taken from Defenders of the Realm :D

 The board is seeded with tomb cards which hold treasures, traps, curses and monsters!

What perils lurk inside the TOMB!?!

 My intrepid band of heroes!

brave adventurers!

 ...ready to face the perils of the crypt!!!

 The game ends when all the tombs are cleared from the board.  The players then add up all the experience points from treasures collected, monsters killed, and traps disarmed.

For fans of dungeon crawl-type games, you really can't go wrong with Tomb.  The amount of cards and heroes available ensures that you'll be playing the game for quite some time without it feeling repetitive.

Plus, there's nothing like the feeling of hacking your way through room after room of monsters and collecting treasure.  Grab some beer and pretzels, invite some close friends and gear up for adventure!

Happy gaming guys!

For more information on Tomb: Cryptmaster, visit the AEG website!

Weekend Boardgame Sept 3 2011: Arkham Horror

Hey Geekshelfers!  I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend.  I was lucky enough to get together with some friends from work this long weekend to play some Arkham Horror.   

Simply put, Arkham Horror is a boardgame set in the fictional town of H.P. Lovecraft's Arkham, Massachusetts where you and up to 7 other players cooperatively play as investigators running around town killing monsters, sealing portals to other dimensions, and trying to stay alive and preventing the Ancient evil from awakening!

Here's what the board looks like with The Dunwich Horror expansion added to it.  In case you hadn't noticed, the game takes up quite a bit of room!

Setting up...

 And if that isn't enough, Fantasy Flight Games have been releasing expansions (both big and small) that add more characters, encounters, monsters and Ancient Old Ones to the mix.  Here's a picture of every expansion that my friend Jason brought over.  YIKES!

Jtop brings over a couple of expansions...

 I'd recommend playing with only 1 big box expansion (the Dunwich expansion, in this case) and mix and match the investigators and monsters from the other expansions if you want to amp up the variety and make things more interesting.  Trying to juggle more expansions beyond the first one just makes things a bit too unwieldy and confusing.

Base game with Dunwich Horror expansion

 Anyway, the game promptly began and we were already feeling the pressure.  The base game is hard enough as it is, but adding an expansion certainly ratchets up the difficulty level for sure.

And so it begins!

 Not too long after starting the game, things spiraled out of control and we had gates and monsters popping up.  For reference, if a portal (or gate) opens, the Ancient One inches closer and closer to waking up.  This is bad.  This is like the coming of Gozer in Ghostbusters.  Yup.  HORRIBLE!

...Already losing :(

As I mentioned, we were overwhelmed by too many open portals and Nyarlathotep , the Ancient One awoke and promptly devoured all the investigators.  We all lost.  Bye bye. Game over.

See, I told you it was gonna be bad.

A swift defeat from Nyarlathotep. 

 After a bit of huffing and puffing, we quickly restart the game with the same investigators and pick a new Ancient Evil.  We worked better as a team this time around and had a better balance of killing monsters and even sealing one or two gates here and there!

Just a couple of geeks.

 Money is quite helpful in the game as it allows you to buy some weapons for your investigators.

"I'm rich, biatch!"

 And with weapons, you can take on and kill several monsters like Leo Anderson here!  After killing monsters, you can claim them for yourself as trophies.

Jtop as Leo Anderson  : "Come get some!"

 Towards the end of the game, more gates opened and Shub Niggurath, the Ancient One begins to awaken.  As I said, each time a gate opens, you add a doom marker to the Ancient One's card.  Here, you can see that he's 2 gates away from waking up....

Shub-Niggurath about to awaken!

 Realizing that there is no way for us to seal all the gates in time, we make a last ditch effort to stock up on spells and weapons to get ready for our final battle.

Spending the last turns beefing up our characters

 It was a close call but we ended up defeating Shub with nobody getting killed at all!  We worked together as a team healing and buffing each other as we chipped away at the Ancient One.

The Great Old One is defeated!  The world is safe.  For now

I know the game looks a bit complicated with all the bits and rules.  However, if you've got the patience to learn the rules or just play it with someone who knows it inside and out, you'll have a blast with this game.

The game can be quite hard, especially with the expansion or two thrown in so just be prepared for that.    However, this is a game that has the potential to tell a grim, macabre story and if played with the right group, can be totally, out of control, wall to wall fun.

For more information on Arkham Horror, please visit Boardamegeek.com

Happy Gaming guys!